IT touches the heart of “Our Mother”
with happiness queerly regretful
To muse on all they who instinctively
bring her their innermost grief,
For reasons she never can fathom

they come, as if wholly forgetful
Of fear to repose their confessions
with Our Town’s fount of relief.

What crucified faces of maidens
despairing in love’s desolation

Have streamed with the weeping they’ve hidden
from all, except Mother alone!
What stormy-heart fighters came wildly
lamenting their souls’ tribulation
At hearing the weaklings they’d vanquished

from terrible silences groan!

What saints who had failed of the halo,
because their stiff features retarded
The flow of affection from children
they loved, though with signals confused,

Would open, for Mother’s eyes only,
mysterious portals that guarded
Their yearning for all the caresses
their hickory manners refused.

When parents, grown aged, and basking

long years in the Town’s veneration,
Shrank bitter and dumb, at the blow of
an archangel son in disgrace,
How he knelt in despair with Our Mother,
and rose with the transfiguration

Of that which is God, or just mother,
that shines in her triumphant face.

Yet Mother is given to blaming
her nature for cold-hearted dealing;—
“Dear souls, how they pour out their troubles

to me, whose responses are wood!
Though I strive to console them, my sayings
seem void, to myself, of all feeling,
For I never can find an expression
to make my heart half understood.”
“And I never can love them enough
in their sadness, however I’m trying
To soften the life in my heart
till it break with their anguishing tears,
For it’s flooded with gladness to feel them

so helped by the balm of the crying,—
And, oh, what a shame I’m made happy
through sorrows they’ll carry for years.”